


Riding Lynda Carter

by quixoticquest



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: As kids and as adults, Broken Bones, Established reddie as adults, Flashbacks, M/M, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, Winter Break, richie's mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 11:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17202635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixoticquest/pseuds/quixoticquest
Summary: Prompt: “young eddie falling over and breaking his leg in the barrens and richie has to find a way to get him out and to a doctor”





	Riding Lynda Carter

For the last twenty years since he had moved away from Derry, Richie had left a majority of his childhood crap at his folks’ place. There wasn’t any real purpose for it in LA. But recently he had an encounter with his past again, and the people in it. Now just seemed like as good a time as any to revisit those old keepsakes, go through what he wanted to donate, or keep.

Keep in preparation for moving in with his boyfriend, that is. 

“Yikes, this inflatable pool has got to go,” Eddie stated, gripping the great rubber monstrosity with both hands, shielded by yellow gloves.

“Aw, why?” Richie whined, for no other reason than it was fun to be contrary. “That’ll make a great centerpiece for our dining room table. Just gotta find one big enough.”

Eddie trashed the pool, eyeing his boyfriend the whole way into the black garbage bag. Richie just smiled and carried on flipping through a box of pictures from some party or another.

“Hey, what’s this?” There were only so many things that Richie expected to find in his parents’ garage besides his dad’s tools and rat poop. Imagine his surprise when Eddie dragged a big hunk of old wood out from behind Went’s workbench. A set of rusty, crusted runners hooked under the cobweb covered slab, which meant it could only be one thing.

“Oh, shit. That.” Richie rushed over, tripping over Eddie’s trash bag as he yanked the old sled away from him (and  _ boy  _ was it heavy!). “This we can burn. I mean there’s no way to throw it away responsibly and with global warming running rampant it won’t serve any purpose if we donate it.”

“Wait, I remember this.” Eddie gasped, eyes flashing brighter than Richie expected anyone else pushing forty. “Your Flexible Flyer, from ‘87. I can’t believe you didn’t take better care if it. Don’t you remember, Richie? Oh my gosh.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Richie grumbled, staring ruefully at the dreaded sled. That was one memory he wished not to keep. 

*** 

Patience was not a virtue Richie Tozier possessed, but today, he was actually giving it the old college try. Watching Mrs. Kaspbrak fret and dote over her nylon-clad son, pulling buttons and zippers and strings until he looked like a bright red Michelin Man, was its own kind of torture. Richie couldn’t groan, couldn’t sigh. He couldn’t even laugh when Mrs. K  asked if Eddie had remembered his thermal underwear (though he would definitely tell Bill and Stanley later).

One wrong move, and he’d be sent off without Eddie for the rest of the day - maybe the rest of winter break. Who knew when Derry was going to get another perfect eight inches of tantalizing snow again? Probably on a school day in February for the jerk principal to keep class in session.

“I want you back before it gets too dark, you hear me?” Mrs. K commanded, while Richie struggled not to fidget in the doorway. And here he thought he could avoid all this consternation if his mom called and asked the night before. Like they were six and still needed to schedule playdates.

Eddie nodded, with a good deal of swishy noises between the hat, earmuffs, hood, and scarf all competing to swallow up his face. 

After a drawn out goodbye session full of wet cheek kisses and smeared lipstick stains, they were off, stepping through the snowtracks Richie had already made on his way to the door. 

“You don’t have to pee, do you?” he asked Eddie, when they were out of earshot. “ I dunno if I can wait any longer if you do. You might have to take one for the team and shove a bottle up your pants.”

Eddie made a noise that sounded like a lot of hot air against wool, his mouth muffled by his scarf.

“Pardon?” Richie asked, cheesing.

Eddie growled, shoved his scarf down, and ripped off his hood. “I said  _ shut up _ , Richie,” he snapped, wiping his mother’s lipstick off his cold-nipped cheeks.

Walking was a lot faster when they reached the street, where the snow had been scraped away the night before in preparation for what the perky blonde weather lady on channel five was calling  _ the biggest snowfall of the season _ . It certainly seemed to be true, with the fluffy white stuff climbing up Richie’s legs to chill his shins. Perfect weather for playing (so long as Eddie’s mom decided to be reasonable).

“Check it out,” Richie gushed, shuffling backward to pull his brand spanking new Flexible Flyer out from the bushes where he had tucked it away. Had to hide it before he got to the Kaspbraks’. No way Mrs. K would let Eddie participate in any winter activity more strenuous than a snow angel, if she knew about it.

“Wow,” Eddie exclaimed, all bright-eyed excitement as he bent toward the sled to glide his mittens over the red runners and smooth, finished wood. “This is so awesome, Richie! Is it the newest model?”

“Yeah, Santa really pimped me out this year.” Richie grinned smugly from behind his glasses, and crossed his arms - best he was able in his stiff, puffy snow jacket. 

“Did you name it?”

“ _ Her _ , Eds, her. You know what Bill says. And yes, I did. Wanna know what?”

“Well, that’s kind of why I asked, stupid.”

“Her name is Lynda Carter,” Richie proclaimed, patting the flat seat of the Flexible Flyer with his gloved hand, “because she’s fast, and strong, and the minute I saw her I knew I wanted to ride her all day long.”

Eddie must not have been a fan of  _ Wonder Woman _ , because he levelled a dry glare at Richie. “Gross.”

“Get your own sled if you don’t like it, Eds.”

“I can’t!”

Eager to put Eddie’s house far behind them, Richie grabbed the rope on Lynda Carter and started off on their winter trek, Eddie in tow. The number one spot for sledding in Derry was behind the library, where the slope was flat and steep and teeming with every stupid idiot from school, pushing into one another and taking forever to get back up to slide down again. With that many people, the snow was bound to get worn through too.

“The library’s in the other direction, Richie,” Eddie pointed out, shuffling along behind Lynda.

“I know,” Richie chirped. Their walk was pretty slow-going, but there wasn’t much he could do dragging a sled with almost a foot of snow on the ground.

Eddie made a flabbergasted noise that sounded like his voice had been caught in the back of his throat. “Then where are we going?”

“You’ll see!”

It didn’t take very long to see. Richie was still trying to master the art of anticipation, but one thing he did know was that if he told Eddie where they were headed, he ran the risk of derailing his whole operation. Sometimes Eddie could be just as persnickety as his own mother.

In no time, toes chilled through boots and two layers of socks, they arrived at the road up to the Kissing Bridge. Richie waited like a good little boy for a car to pass before he crossed the street, but Eddie yanked him back by his collar and nearly choked the life out of him.

“The Barrens?” Eddie demanded, while Richie lamented (not even a hundred feet away from their glorious destination!). “You wanna sled in the Barrens? It’s all trees, Richie. You’ll break your sled.”

“ _ Lynda _ ,” Richie whined. “And I can steer clear of trees! Don’t you have any faith in me, Eds?”

When Eddie stared him down silently for too long, Richie waved his arms and relented. 

“Okay fine, we can go to the dumb old library.”

“Good,” Eddie stated, grinding his heel into the snow to turn around.

“Where everyone else is gonna be,” Richie went on.

“Probably!”

“Bumping into each other, hogging the slope.”

“Oh well!”

“Waiting like sitting ducks for when Henry and his chuckleheads come and ruin everything.”

All Eddie’s forward momentum ceased. Bingo.

“I think we could take ‘em though,” Richie went on, patting his scrawny bicep through his coat. “A little fisticuffs never hurt nobody - well, just so long as you can dodge some punches, otherwise your mom’s gonna have a hissy-”

“Just cross the street already!” Eddie shoved both hands into Richie’s back, and he grinned triumphantly toward the heavens as they headed to the Barrens.

The slanted plane of land leading down into the trees was a lot steeper than Richie remembered from the summer. Maybe it evened out toward the bottom, he wondered. Not all the snow would stick to the top of the slope, and fell to the end of it, to create a bigger cushion, all because of gravity. That was just basic physics, after all.

“How ‘bout here?” Richie asked, stopping after they’d walked on for a few minutes. “Looks pretty clear to me.”

“Richie, there’s like seven trees all down that direction,” Eddie said, motioning toward the pristine blanket of snow laid before them - or it would have been pristine, if not for the spindly trunks shooting into the sky.

“Uh, I count five,” Richie retorted, hauling Lynda over the bridge barrier. “And I told you, I can steer past them. All I have to do is lean a little. It’s  _ barely  _ steering.”

If Eddie meant to say something back, he floundered, helpless while Richie went about settling Lynda where she wouldn’t slip too soon, and mounting with the rope in his hand. When Eddie didn’t come sit his stupid butt down immediately after, Richie waved him over.

“I don’t know about this, Richie.”

“Come on, Eds! What are you, a pussy?”

Eddie’s eyes flared indignantly. Richie was doing a damn good job with his kicks in the right direction today.

“I am  _ not _ a pussy.” Eddie dropped onto Lynda with a creak of wood.

“You can put your arms around my waist if you want,” Richie gushed.

“Just shut up and push off!”

Richie did just that. Lynda and her load slid through the snow with amazing agility, gaining speed as the incline disappeared behind them. Richie yanked on the string and wrenched his body around the thick trees scattered across the hillside, usually in the nick of time, to the tune of Eddie’s shrieking. Richie matched him in volume, only he was laughing instead.

They came to a gradual stop at the bottom of the slope, grinding into the snow-covered field that banked off into the stream where the sewers emptied out. A couple more feet and they might have been skidding across the frozen, rocky water.

Red-faced and panting, mostly from shouting their lungs out, the two of them climbed off Lynda, just a little eager for a surface that didn’t move and rumble beneath them. Richie grabbed onto the rope again, while his stomach let loose their butterflies, and his joints relaxed from being clenched so hard.

“See? That wasn’t so bad!” he exclaimed, throwing his hands into the air.

Eddie wasn’t hyperventilating, or curled up on his side in the snow - a good sign. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said, while Richie did his best to look mock offended. “You steered alright, Richie. If we do it from that spot every time we should be good.”

“See? And you doubted me.” More smug than he deserved to be, Richie slung an arm around Eddie’s neck, nearly tripping him. They hauled Lynda back up the slope, and did it all over again.

“Should we have a philosophical debate, like Calvin and Hobbes?” Richie called over his shoulder as they tipped off their starting point.

“I dunno if that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for starters,” Eddie went on as they whizzed through the trees, “what do you know about philosophy?”

“Lots!”

“Well I don’t.”

“Then I’ll teach you, and that’ll be the debate.”

“ _ Second _ , you don’t want to be like Calvin and Hobbes when they sled, Richie. You know at the end of every comic, Calvin and Hobbes start arguing, fly through the air and-”

A thick crack sent the Flexible Flyer - well, flying - arcing over a shallow rock ledge Richie had managed to avoided before. The two of them lost their grip far too easily, airborne for a half a second that felt so much longer. Long enough for Richie to register his dad would kill him if he broke Lynda.

The impact threw him flat into the snow, harsh and hard, the icy powder biting into his face as his frames dug into his skin. The wind got knocked out of Richie for a moment, and he squirmed, choking, until there was air in his lungs again, and he could sit up without dying. 

If it wasn’t Lynda, then he was definitely toast for his specs, he decided, when he pulled them off his face to find thin cracks splintering the glass. Richie whined, more bummed out than sore, really, and lumbered to his feet to survey the damage on his beloved sled.

“ _ Ow ow ow _ .”

Pausing in his literal tracks, Reddie shuffled in the snow to find Eddie hunched over in on himself. He was breathing hard, tilting back, and forth.

“Asthma?” Richie asked, wide-eyed as a new panic set in.

Eddie shook his head, eyes screwed shut. “I landed funny on a tree root. Over there. I think I sprained my knee.”

“Lemme see.” Richie knelt down beside him, hovering hesitantly. Eventually he worked up the nerve to grab Eddie’s leg with his gloved hand - only to reel back, when Eddie howled louder than he’d ever heard before.

“That hurts!” Eddie snapped, tears dotted along his eyelashes.

“Holy shit,” Richie breathed, wary. “For real, Eds?”

“You think I’m making it up?”

“Well you’ve freaked out about smaller stuff!”

“I’m freaking out because it hurts so bad!” Eddie swore, mouth twisting up on itself as he fingered his knee. He whimpered, a small, scared sound. Richie had never heard anything like it before.

“Maybe we should take you to the doctor,” he said, forcing a single logical thought into his head.

“No!” Eddie’s head flew up, eyes wide. “No, I hate the doctor. They’re just going to call my mom and she’s gonna pitch a fit, and I won’t be able to hang out with you guys ever again! If we go to the pharmacy we can get stuff to make a splint. I can hide it under my pants and pretend I fell at home, later.”

“I don’t have any money, though!”

“Neither do I!”

“Then why would you suggest the pharmacy?!”

Richie thought long and hard, jarred by every pained noise that left Eddie’s mouth. No Mrs. K, no doctor, no pharmacy. Where the hell were they supposed to go?

A new idea dawned on Richie, and he gasped. “Wait, we could go to my parents’ house. They know how shitty your mom is, they’ll know what to do.”

Eddie stared at Richie, suspicion written across his distraught face. “You think so?”

“Yeah, my dad could probably figure something out. He’s a doctor.”

“He’s a  _ dentist _ , Richie.”

“Everyone’s a critic, ain’t they?” Glancing around, Richie eventually spotted Lynda through his broken glasses, and went to retrieve her where she had capsized. Wasn’t broken, thankfully - but that was the least of his worries. 

“I can pull you out on the sled,” he explained, situating her rightside up, before returning to Eddie, beckoning with his hands. “Come on. You can prop your leg up.” The nerves must have been getting to Richie, because he finished off with his best cowboy. “Don’t you worry, little lady, doc’s gon’ be ‘round to patch you up real soon.”

Eddie stared glumly, only to wince and his as he moved to get on the sled a second later. Richie’s guiding arms could only help so much. Each noise was like hot and cold, in regard to how much pain was being inflicted. A small breath was cold, and screaming  _ OW OW OW _ was hot hot hot.

They eventually got Eddie set up with his leg propped in front of him, the other tucked under his butt. Like that, there wasn’t any room for Richie, but he had to pull anyway. 

“Hold on tight,” he chirped, heaving the flimsy rope to drag Eddie, and Lynda, out of the Barrens.

There was no reasonable way to leave the way they came, which meant they had to take the long way out, following the more gradual incline of the land, past the sewer. Hauling over snow-laden grasses, rumbling across stones embedded in the ground, Richie really put his arms to work. He thought just Lynda had been bad - add a hundred pounds of injured pipsqueak, and it was downright torture. His knuckles ached in their grip, and the muscles in his arms seared. But hey - at least his knees were in tip-top shape.

“What did I tell you?” he mentioned at some point, huffing for breath as his heart worked itself into a tizzy behind his ribcage. Now that D in gym class made perfect sense. “We didn’t hit a tree, did we?”

Eddie’s pained groan was answer enough. Eventually they got themselves up and out of the Barrens, back into Derry proper, where the path was even and flat. Still, there was a whole neighborhood to traverse before they reached Richie’s house. 

“You gotta admit, it was pretty fun, right Eds?” Richie asked hopefully. The silence behind him was deafening. All he could ever hope for, at any point in his life, was a reaction. Struggled noises didn’t really fit the bill. “And someday, we’ll laugh about this. How you hurt your knee riding Lynda Carter.”

“I’m not laughing about it now,” Eddie grit out.

“Well, we could laugh about something else.”

“No jokes. My stomach hurts.”

“Jeez, your knee hurts, your stomach hurts, there’s always  _ something  _ with you, isn’t there?”

Wondering, maybe for the first time, if he had gone to far, Richie decided he was better off shutting up - also for the first time.

They finally came upon the Tozier house, and Richie picked up the pace for the home stretch, boots grinding into the asphalt road as he hauled ass to his own front lawn. He went up the driveway, and “parked” Lynda in the yard (which Mom had said  _ not  _ to do, but desperate times and all that). Eddie grunted and grimaced all the way up, even with Richie taking one arm over his shoulder and his own hand around Eddie’s waist, so he could limp his way to the front door.

Before they could even make an attempt at the porch steps, though, the door flew open. Richie’s mom stood there in her thick Christmas sweater, a rag from some abandoned chore in her hand.

It didn’t take much to assess the situation, with Eddie propped up on Richie, his leg suspended in front of him.

“Richard, what did you do?”

“Eddie hurt his leg!”  _ It’s not my fault _ rose to the tip of Richie’s tongue, but he swallowed it back. He wasn’t a hundred percent on that statement yet. He was pretty sure the anxious feeling rattling around in his skull was some form of guilt anyway.

Mrs. Tozier helped Eddie inside, over to the couch in the parlor no one was supposed to go in unless guests were over. Without any hesitation, with what Richie could only call Mom Mode fully activated, she took his boots off and rolled the leg of his snow pants up as gingerly and carefully as possible.

Richie’s eyes flared wide, his pulse picking up at the sight of the bulbous purple bruise spread across Eddie’s knee. He flicked his gaze into the corner of the room, where everything was much less grotesque.

“Oh no,” Mrs. Tozier murmured, trying not to touch Eddie’s knee too much. The red spread across his freckled face had little to do with the snow now, Richie figured, but Eddie set his jaw all the same.

“I think it’s broken. We’ll have to call your mom, Eddie. She can drive you to the hospital.”

“What? No!” Richie and Eddie said - almost in unison.

Mrs. Tozier gave each of them a look (the one for her son slightly more scathing). “We can’t do anything here, Richie. Eddie, you need a doctor. You need to get an X-ray, and probably some kind of cast.”

“Then what if we take him to the doctor?” Richie asked.

“They would still have to call Mrs. Kasprak,” his mom answered, almost exasperated. “And we don’t need to be at the hospital right now. I’m sorry, Richie. Eddie is his mother’s responsibility, not ours.”

She moved to leave, only for Richie to fling himself at her, clutching around her waist.

“You can’t do that, Mom! Mrs. K is gonna ruin his life! He’s going to be stuck with her big fat ass all winter break and not be allowed to leave the house!”

“ _ Richard _ _!_ Language!”

“It’s fine, Richie.”

Who would have thought it would be Eddie to stop the commotion. Richie paused, still latched onto his mom like a baby koala. 

He expected Eddie to look so small and sad from the couch, what with the latest turn of events, but the opposite was true. He sat up, leg out, expression hard. If his knee weren’t busted, Richie thought he might shoot up and march right over.

“I gotta go to the doctor with my mom, that’s all there is too it.” Eddie huffed, fingers fiddling in his lap. “We tried, but if my leg is broken then I can’t really hide it. Thanks for getting me out of the Barrens, though. You really helped me out there.”

“The Barrens?” Mrs. Tozier demanded. “You brought your sled to the Barrens? What’s wrong with you, look what happened! Not to mention how much we paid for it, not for you to go crashing into things!”

“It was my idea, Mrs. Tozier,” Eddie chimed in, lying as easily as he would to his  _ own  _ mother. “I told Richie we should go play in the Barrens. It’s always so crowded behind the library. I thought it would be more fun.”

Richie stared at Eddie in disbelief. Eddie stared back, confident, despite the pain that twitched on his face.

Behind them, Mrs. Tozier sighed. “We’ll talk about this later, Richie. Right now, I’m going to call Eddie’s mom.”

She slipped right out of his grasp, striding away, into the kitchen. Richie stood there defeated. He hadn’t felt sorrier in his entire life.

Mrs. Kaspbrak came soon enough, spittle flying as she shrieked. Not just at Richie, but at his mom, as Eddie waited by, face turned away. She took him away, far away, to the hospital - and after that, home. His piss poor excuse for a home, where he stayed until school was back in session. Richie got grounded for playing in the Barrens for about the same amount of time.

He never rode Lynda Carter again.

***

“I felt so fucking betrayed by my mom that day,” Richie explained, shaking his head, laughing when the memory took a somber turn he had not been prepared for. “I couldn’t believe she did that. But I guess, in the end, I sorta betrayed you more, huh?”

“What?” Eddie asked, face twisting up.

“I delivered you into the hands of the enemy! I told you you wouldn’t have to go to the doctor or your mom and look what I did. I was a real snot-nosed brat.” Richie stared at the sled -  _ Lynda _ \- accusingly. As if she had made the decision to go play in a dangerous place. 

Suddenly, Richie’s gaze was jarred by Eddie’s hands, forcing their eyes to meet.

“Don’t be stupid, Rich. We were kids.” His gaze turned a little soft. “I broke my knee, we couldn’t just avoid the hospital, as much as we wanted to back then. It was a mistake, yeah, and definitely your fault-”

“Thanks,” Richie said, voice muffled by the squish of his cheeks as he stooped down in front of Eddie.

“But I still agreed to it. And I turned out okay.”

“But your mom. I just wish there was something me or my parents could have done-”

“There wasn’t.” Eddie shook his head. “We were kids, we were at the mercy of everything. We didn’t have control over anything except where we went to fucking sled. And I was my mom’s responsibility, even if she was shitty about it. Not yours, or your moms.”

“Funny,” Richie mumbled. “My mom said something like that, I think.”

“Probably because she was an adult for way longer than you.”

“You callin’ my mama old?”

Eddie rolled his eyes, and tilted forward. Their lips met, easing Richie’s troubled mind. His boyfriend was right, anyway - there was little they could have done back then. You couldn’t exactly call CPS on a mom keeping her son home about his broken leg.

“Besides,” Eddie said when they parted. “Mom’s in a retirement community, and it’s just you and me, now. Together forever.”

Richie gasped, delighted. “You’re right! That means you’re  _ my  _ responsibility.”

Eddie frowned. “That’s not what I-”

“Worry not!” Setting Lynda down, Richie clutched his arms around Eddie and swooped him into a dip, his boyfriend yelling all the while. “I will protect you with my life, fair sir! The evil, wretched, corpulent Sonia-beast can never touch us again!”

Richie pulled Eddie in for a sweet, enveloping kiss, the annoyed noises eventually dying down until there was nothing but soft lips, and an eased conscience.

Hell. Maybe one day, Lynda Carter would ride again.


End file.
